An essay on the comparative merits of artificial and natural classification, as applied to diseases of the skin ... / [John Paget].

  • Paget, John, 1808-1892.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the comparative merits of artificial and natural classification, as applied to diseases of the skin ... / [John Paget]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/54 (page 12)
    19 -A. r* ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF 2. They are not merely local affections, but are usually at¬ tended by certain modifications in other parts of the economy, the one appearing to be the cause of the other, or at least to possess some necessary connection. 3. The same disease of the skin occurs in many individuals ; so that there exists not merely an analogy between them, but as positive a similarity, as between any two individuals of the same species in the animal or vegetable kingdom.* 44 Toutes les fois que se trouvent reunies les conditions ex- primees par les trois propositions que je viens de vous rappeler, une methode naturelle est possible et utile; et les formes et les principes des classifications zoologiques et botaniques peuvent et doivent etre appliques.” It remains for us then only to prove that these conditions are fulfilled by the diseases of the skin. The required conditions fulfilled by the Diseases of the Skin. -—That the diseases of the skin, in common with every other disease, obey certain and precise laws, however difficult it may sometimes be to detennine these laws, no one who has studied pathological phenomena with attention will be inclined to deny. That exceptions to these laws are of more frequent occurrence than in the other sciences to which natural classification has been applied, we are inclined to admit; but we cannot help suspecting that many circumstances, considered as exceptions, should be rather attributed to the ignorance of the observer th an the error of nature. Since the cultivation of morbid ana¬ tomy has effected so much for medical science, how rarely do we hear of those miraculous maladies which used to astonish and puzzle our forefathers ? How simple and regular do the most extraordinary phenomena of disease appear when investi- * Histoire Generate et Particuliere des Anomalies de 1’Organisation, par M. Isi¬ dore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1332, Paris, Tome i. p. 104. These propositions run thus in the original 1. Les modifications organiques qui meritent reelement le nom de monstruosites, sont soumises a des Jois certaines et precises. 2. Elies ne constituent pas des deviations purement locales, en ce sens que, chez les monstres, plusieurs anomalies sont ovdinairement associees ensemble, Pune paraissant etre la cause de l’autre, ou du moins leur existence etant liee d’une maniere necessaire. 3. La meme monstruosite se reproduit ordinairement chez plusieurs individus, en sorte qu’il existe entre ceux-ci une analogie, et souvent meme une ressemblance frappante, et qu’ils peuvent etre consideres comme formes sur le meme type.” It will be observed, that the third is the only one of these propositions in which we have, in any degree, altered the spirit of the original ; and we have ventured to do so in that instance, because the diseases of the skin are fully adapted to this more re¬ stricted application, and because we have some doubts as to the propiiety of classify¬ ing from analogy only. It must not be imagined, that, because we agree with the principle of these propositions, that we therefore agree with the author’s application of them. Notwithstanding the elaborate, and, in many respects, excellent work of M. Isidore G. Saint-Hilaire, we still retain the opinion we formerly expressed on this subject; and later observations have only tended to confirm us in the same per¬ suasion, that monsters cannot be arranged in a natural classification.— Vide Ed. Med. and Surg. Journal, Oct. 183L